Abbott Labs rises on hepatitis C drug data (Update)

October 15, 2012

Abbott Laboratories said Monday that its experimental hepatitis C drug regimen cured 99 percent of patients in a midstage study with the most common and hardest-to-treat type of the disease.

Patients who took a three-drug regimen and the drugs Ritonavir and ribavirin had undetectable virus levels after 12 weeks of treatment. The North Chicago, Illinois, company says it observed a 93 percent cure rate in a group of patients who were not helped by other treatments.

Patients in the trial had genotype 1 hepatitis C, which is the most common type in the Western world and the hardest to treat. The regimen did not include interferon, a standard component of hepatitis C therapy that causes flu-like side effects that can last for months. The study included 77 patients who hadn't been treated before and 41 patients who were not helped by other treatments.

Abbott shares rose $2.63, or 3.8 percent, to $71.90 in afternoon trading. The stock has been trading around all-time highs and peaked at $71.99 earlier in the session.

Shares of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. also traded higher on promising data for a hepatitis C regimen. The company said 94 percent of patients who took a combination of three experimental drugs, daclatasvir, asunaprevir, and BMS-791325, were cured in a 12-week study. Those patients did not take interferon or ribavirin.

Hepatitis C is a virus that can lead to life-threatening liver damage and is the main cause of liver transplants in the U.S. Analysts say the market for treatments is potentially lucrative for drugmakers. More people are expected to be diagnosed with the tough-to-treat disease as the baby boomer generation ages.

After a two-decade drought, two new hepatitis C drugs were approved last year: Merck & Co.'s Victrelis and Incivek from Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. Both significantly improve the cure rate over what has long been the standard of care, a mix of injections and pills with nasty side effects that takes several months and still doesn't cure many patients.

Citi Investment Research analyst Yaron Werber said the study results were strong, particularly in newly diagnosed patients. However he said the regimen is complicated because it includes five different types of pills, and Ritonavir can cause serious side effects when taken with some other medications. Werber said he believes a regimen being studied by Gilead Sciences Inc. could produce similar cure rates with fewer pills.

Gilead's approach uses two experimental pills, including its drug candidate sofosbuvir, as well as ribavirin.

Related Stories

University of Cincinnati research published in the Sept. 14, 2011, advance online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that patients with hepatitis C who took a combination medicationa telaprevir-based ...

A new combination of investigational drugs successfully suppressed hepatitis C genotype 1 infection in a high percent of patients who had not responded to previous treatment in a study led by a University of Michigan hepatologist.

Recommended for you

Statins are a hugely popular drug class used to manage blood cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease. Previous studies had raised questions about adverse behavioral changes with statins, such as irritability ...

Researchers led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have developed a second-generation antibiotic that shows early effectiveness against common bacterial infections that pose a serious health threat to children ...

Prescribing patients two or more drugs that do not reach the same parts of the body could accelerate a pathogen's resistance to all of the drugs being used in treatment, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings ...

Placebos have helped to ease symptoms of illness for centuries and have been a fundamental component of clinical research to test new drug therapies for more than 70 years. But why some people respond to placebos and others ...